"Bohemian Rhapsody" was hands down one of the best movies we have seen in a long time.
Focused on the life of Freddie Mercury and his career as the lead singer of the well-known rock band Queen, Bohemian Rhapsody paid a great tribute to the late singer. Rami Malek plays Freddie with extreme talent, there wasn't one moment throughout the movie that I thought anyone else could've played the part.
If you don't know who Rami Malek is, this was not his first movie, he played in the Twilight Saga's "Breaking Dawn" (parts one and two) and also in multiple "Night at the Museum" movies. Also featured in the movie were Mike Meyers, and Allen Leech ("Downton Abbey's" Tom Branson).
It cannot be said that Rami didn't channel Freddie's personality.
The actor and the movie itself did a great job as portraying Freddie as the legend he truly was. It walked us through a brief mention of Freddie's humble upbringing as Farrokh Bulsara and the very beginnings of Queen, to the Live Aid concert at the Wembley Stadium in London six years before his passing. Watching the movie, you feel all of the emotion, the confusion, the love, the eccentric personality of Mercury, and the sense of family the band really had despite disagreements they had throughout their career.
Of course, I wasn't even born when Queen was performing, so in a way, I feel it might not have affected me emotionally quite as much as the way it affected many others in the theater. With laughter, tears, and even clapping, we were all engulfed in the life and career of Freddie Mercury.
Although some things may have been a little more dramatized or even underplayed, such as Freddie's sexuality, relationships, and the other band members' lives it was a great movie. In my opinion, even without those aspects, you could still relate and feel what Freddie was feeling, it did touch on a few relationships, however, this was not the focus of the movie and I don't feel it needed to be.
While the "Tomatometer" on Rotten Tomatoes only gave the movie a 60%, the "Audience Score," shows that 94% rated the movie with a score of 3.5 stars or higher. Some people who left reviews on IMDB felt the movie should have shown more of Freddie's life after Live Aid, and another review of only 3/10 stars claimed, "This move comes off like a LIFETIME film and not a serious Queen or Freddy Mercury Biopic for the big screen." Despite reviews such as this where people claimed to be disappointed, from the 55,071 user ratings, the movie earned an 8.4/10.